The Suggestion

The Suggestion

(“The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I say that what everyone does is evil.” John 7:7)

We are a soup, stew at best, full of spice and
onion,
knifed flesh and potato. On the chilly days
of rain, the darkening moments when pain pulls
the feet from one graveled step to the next, our
aroma fills the senses and covers senseless stains
left on towels and carpet.

If death is in the pot we do not know by the tasting.
No one complains, the stew is plainly satisfying, though
no one noticed the green peels of potatoes left
on the kitchen floor.

Why dampen the home and comfort,
we are full of good eating, and famine is older
than the recipe we have used from grandmother’s
mother and twice over again.

We are stew barely potable; pottage with rich aroma.

We are the best thing on a rainy day, warming toes and bones
and heart and face. But the trace that swirls round
the stewed liquid runs through all our methods of
preparation. We know it so well that we know nothing
else at all.

Until we taste the bouillabaisse prepared, not by a chef,
but by fishermen at the end of a long day of cold air
and freezing hands. Manna, bread of heaven, you
must
understand.

We do not hate you, we barely know you. We
hate the suggestion we have not perfected
our recipes
by now. We compete with contaminated hands,
while you stand by and watch,
but,
just before we would poison it all you salt the stew
with Your own death; tasting it once for everyone.
We barely know you. But there is now life in the stew
where you drank our diseased preparation.

Excuse me, someone is at the door, and, if I am right,
it is the knocking of One who, upon my hearing,
will take the time to sup with us tonight.